This constituency stretches from Dungannon in the middle of Northern Ireland to the border at Belleek which is just a ten-minute drive to the Atlantic coast of Donegal. It has had a small but substantial Catholic majority for much of the last twenty years. And yet it remains stubbornly competitive.
Particularly in agriculture and agrifoods, the last twenty years have seen a level of cross border integration in agriculture undreamed of throughout the troubles when the border was much more less fluid socially and economically than it is today. A border which surrounds it on three of four sides.
Despite the notoriety of the IRA bombing of the cenotaph in Enniskillen and the perception amongst protestants in the county of a form of ethnic cleansing aimed at forcing individual families out of their rural holding around the border areas, Fermanagh was one of the least affected counties.
Despite that Catholic majority, the fact that both unionist parties regularly bury the hatchet and agree on a single candidate to run between them means that the gap makes for a tight enough margin for the seat to cross between Sinn Féin and whoever the agreed candidate on the other side is.
Ever since Sinn Féin’s major leap forward in 2001, Michelle Gildernew has been playing cat and mouse with a series of unionist candidates for the seat usually winning or losing by hundreds rather than thousands of votes: most dramatically in 2010 when she won by just four votes.
Ms Gildernew currently holds the seat on a margin of just 875 votes. Remarkably in this election, there has been little speculation as to which way it will go this time around. Tom Elliot the former MP for the Ulster Unionists runs with an open field ahead of him.
Ms Gildernew will compete for a limited number of Catholic and/or cross-community votes, including Cllr Adam Gannon who is running for the SDLP, Matthew Beaumont of Alliance and Caroline Wheeler who is a trade unionist and independent Labour candidate.
Normally FST is the talk of the campaign. If there is nothing going on anywhere else in Northern Ireland (and this time there is) it usually provides the usual two flies climbing up the wall entertainment. Even the Brexit vote ( 58.6% for Remain) doesn’t provide much of a clue of the outcome.
Whilst Elliot remains fairly tight-lipped on the matter, his party leader Steve Aiken has said that given how the present deal (largely unexamined in the wider public debate in GB) puts a border of sorts in the Irish Sea, Remain would be preferable Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
To all intents and purposes that neutralises if not the issue itself then its power to shift voters one way or the other. The quasi Remain position of the Ulster Unionists means that there’s no real choice here. And as for unionist hardline Brexiteers, in practice they have no choice but to vote Elliot.
As Nicholas Whyte notes, the most hopeful sign for Elliot is that in the locals in May Unionist parties outpolled nationalist parties. But the two elections are very different and Sinn Féin generally bring their senior game to all their Westminster’s FPTP contests.
In the last election, some 1,707 proxy votes and 2,981 postal votes were issued in FST alone: the largest number in any Northern Irish constituency. Although unionists complain more loudly about Sinn Féin’s established practice of using marked registers, which show who has or has not voted.
Likely winner: As in North Belfast, I’m narrowly plumping for incumbent Gildernew. However, the quietness of the campaign suits her opponent. The other unknown is whether her absence from the Brexit debate in Westminster play with border nationalists wishing to register a complaint.
“Westminster Bridge, London” by Arran Bee is licensed under CC BY
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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